


The Tet Of Two

by mr-finch (soubriquet)



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Dark Tower - Stephen King, Joker (2019)
Genre: Coming of Age, Gen, M/M, Moderate Injuries, Pre-Fall of Gilead (The Dark Tower Series), Trial by Combat, gunslinger AU, i just couldn't get this out of my head
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:20:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23661445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soubriquet/pseuds/mr-finch
Summary: Many men have laughed at Arthur these past eleven years, taking him for a simpleton or worse: a mistaken gunslinger's apprentice doomed to seek out his trial, heedless of all warnings, and fail. Ready to go west without the name of his father just to prove he’s more than what people say.But Arthur will not fail.
Relationships: Arthur Fleck/Joker (DCU), Joker (DCU)/Joker (Joker)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8





	The Tet Of Two

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SenkoWakimarin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenkoWakimarin/gifts).



> Bold of you to think I can only write these characters in _one_ AU.
> 
> If you've never read Stephen King's Dark Tower series, first of all, this isn't likely to make a whole lot of sense, though you're still welcome to try. Second of all, go read them right now. If you have, may this fic do ya fine.
> 
> A short summary of a gunslinger's trial: Every year, a group of young boys aged six are chosen from the surrounding towns and villages to come to Gilead and be trained as gunslingers. They do this until they either decide not to take the venture further and remain as nobility, albeit not noteworthy, or until they take their test or trial. This trial usually happens around the age of eighteen, but the apprentice always decides when it's time.
> 
> They must best their tutor in a fight. Each is permitted one weapon - here Arthur's is a set of throwing knives - and if they best their teacher, they win the right to receive their guns and become one of that fabled class: the gunslingers. If they fail, they are exiled and sent west, never to return. It's also somewhat of a rite of passage into manhood (or womanhood, although almost all gunslingers are male).
> 
> In this AU, both Arthur and Joker were picked up as boys and brought to Gilead. The rest you'll see below.

Ka, like a wheel. Turning.

Many men have laughed at Arthur Blackwood these past eleven years, taking him for a simpleton or worse: a mistaken gunslinger's apprentice doomed to seek out his trial, heedless of all warnings, and fail. Ready to go west without the name of his father just to prove he’s more than what people say.

They think Arthur’s butting heads with ka and expecting to come off the victor, which as anyone knows is the way of fools.

There are a few exceptions here, in Gilead, where his mother’s disgrace is less known and Arthur can almost stand proud at the call of his name in the right company. Arthur Blackwood, a name that harks back to the past.

He makes no claim to the line of Eld himself, though his peers expect it of him. That is his mother’s folly, her chaff, and Arthur will play no part in the mockery she brings on their name out here. Away from Pennilton, Arthur is just another 'prentice who can find his own way, sliding away from rumours of drink and pity and begging.

That the rumours are true means nout when it comes to a boy’s reputation.

Arthur knows that the best route to the bottom of the pile is falling in, so he doesn’t let up long on the boys who find his name - or the name of his father - funny. He gets into the same number of spats as the rest, even ‘gainst those twice his size and age. Arthur’s not afraid of a beating; what scares him is being knocked on the ground and stood over.

So he makes sure he fights dirty, even worse than the other boys. Joker understands that. Joker’s p’raps the only one who Arthur fully trusts to see past his name and his less than honourable background to who he is beneath. Blood means much in Gilead and they’ve shared it more than once: fists and foreheads meeting while they grinned and breathed hard after a battle; and when they sliced their palms and shook, once, when he was eight and Joker just turned ten.

They knew even then that they were ka-tet. Arthur’s long thought of Joker as family he had no part in choosing and he gets the sense from Joker like he feels much the same. A ka-tet of two is risky, and not without folly. The stories say that those gunslingers who do, find their end in fire and war, never dust and age. When broken, a tet of two falls worse than any curse.

Boys close in age receive their teachings together. Arthur’s been stuck fast to Joker’s heels since the day he first fought another boy and turned to find another one leaning back against a wall and clapping. There’s no question about Joker moving up early ahead of Arthur: the same way _they_ know their bond, their tutors know too. You put Blackwood and Lynch together, or suffer their reaction.

Hermann Staab ( _druh_ -man, some of the ‘prentices call him, for the way he can wind on) is their tutor for the ways of the world, not for weapons. Books and paper are Arthur’s bread and water: he sops up knowledge every chance he gets and shares it out with Joker at night or whenever they get a chance to kick off alone, which isn’t as often these days. 

Arthur loved calling up his favourite tales of old and sharing them with his ka-mate when they had the time, embellishing wherever events called for it. Most of all, he liked telling Joker stories about himself: wrapping up words around a gunny graf-slinger with a talent at causing a ruckus and calling down hell on those who did him wrong. Man name of Holster.

Arthur thinks Joker liked those tales best of all, but Arthur’s fond of pretending at being modest, even if he ain’t.

It’s Joker he’s thinking of as he stands before Ardus and calls his full name in the High Speech. The thought of Joker, kneeling in the dirt, with his mouth torn asunder by his own blade in the middle of his trial. Arthur had felt that very knife enter his own cheek and wrench it open, like Ardus had caught both of them in one fine slash. Ever since, Arthur has had a far stronger sense of Joker than the faint undercurrent he felt before. That thread of ancient magic Staab calls sight or touch.

Ardus knows Arthur well. He’s cut him down, spat fifty curses and found endless ways of causing hurt, all while teaching Arthur the ways of weapons. They share half a name and little else but the witchy suspicion of the other’s motives. Arthur has no hold on magic, unlike Joker, but his deepening grasp on the touch sometimes puts Ardus on edge the way competence with a weapon won’t.

Arthur’s known his test was coming for a good long while. He hasn’t spent his time talking much with Joker about it, and Ardus isn’t the type to take a ‘prentice aside to ask, cry pardon, but when are ye hoping to become a man? So he’s kept it close, biding his time, practicing when no one else is looking. The bushel of throwing knives he made himself from the smithy’s iron, wrapping their metal ends tight with hemp rope to give him a grip that won’t over-weight the blade. They are light and sized right for his hands in a way that the sticks and wood swords Ardus has them practice with never are.

It’s a dry spring day and Arthur’s been up since before first light, twisting his knives in a juggler’s fidget around and around his long thin fingers. He’s been waiting for Joker to get back from his first posting for months now, and the itch started small, but each day and week that passed has ground that itch against the same spot to the point where now it burns. He can think of little else. His trial and Joker. Together them both, or apart forever.

Even the barn is colder without him, although the straw is thick just the same. If Arthur reaches out, he can feel that connection they shared stretched out across the miles like a weak and hungry thinny. Ready to seize any hint of Joker’s return and eat of it, pressing it right to its humming gullet.

Arthur doesn’t want his ka-mate to return and find him gunless.

He finds Ardus just after dawn, sharpening a thick broadsword in his yard, and calls out his name. He does not show Ardus the weapons within his pockets, though the man knows his choice will not likely be a two-hander.

Arthur grins at the thought that he will have more weapons than hands and Ardus kneels at the sight of that. He has thought Arthur softer than the oil off wet butter and told him so countless times. Today, he will slip on this softness and cut himself on the blade hidden beneath it.

The fight goes on far longer than Arthur expects. Ardus wields a short, blunt staff like it’s just another of the many rippling muscles running around his arms and torso. Arthur has been fed and worked and honed this past long decade and, while he does not look like this - all snake, all fierce dog driven to the winds - he is tough like dried cowskin and not so easy to work over as the child he once was.

Ardus starts with a taunt he should have kept for the end. “Will ye yield, boy?”

He knows the effect his words used to have - still can, if they cut Arthur deep enough - but this bait only pleases Arthur. He’s standing feet apart and arms down, slowing the beat of his heart and going deep into that fine part of himself he thinks of as _Arthur_. His eyes slip from a pale evergreen to dark peach pits and he hears naught but the wind blowing through the yard.

He looks like an easy target. A man who does not move his feet is a dead man, that’s what Ardus has always said, and when Ardus lurches forward in a half-feint Arthur springs, dancing out of the way with his hands empty and his lungs open.

It makes Ardus laugh, and he pulls back on his heels. “Flyin’s all very well–“

Arthur lets him talk, winding his way around the ring to keep the snake’s gaze on him as Ardus matches him step for step. Arthur’s hands are still empty, though he 'wares the reach of that staff: knows its bruises well.

“–but to be a man, y’have to fight.”

Ardus’s lunge this time is no feint. He springs in, staff aiming low but – Arthur reads – held ready for a flip to catch his jaw. He prances backwards, just missing the sweep of it past his chin. 

Ardus recovers near-instant, kicking out his foot to trip Arthur even as he swings the staff back in and goes for his ribs. Seeing this happen slow, like time is waiting on them both, Arthur finds the low wall behind him with his heel and uses it like a spring, grabbing a knife out of his pocket and launching himself forward.

He doesn’t aim straight at Ardus: that’s what the old man would expect, even from a surprise attack like this. Arthur aims for just past his left shoulder, turning even as he leaps, to slash at Ardus’s bare ribs.

He gets a blast of an elbow to his collarbone for his trouble and has to scramble to put distance between them as Ardus turns, and he’s not quite ready for the barrage to continue while the man’s chest starts to bleed.

“Can’t cry off, maggot,” Ardus tells him as he seizes the advantage, driving the point of the staff into Arthur’s chest so fast that Arthur only just manages to make it a glancing blow. Ardus is expecting the move and grabs hold of Arthur’s sleeve, dragging him off balance.

It’s enough to make Arthur panic, and he slashes wild at the hand holding him even as he unconsciously reaches out and gets hit with a rough, hard sense of the man he’s fighting. Arthur can see his move coming in that second like he’s bragging ‘bout it and it’s warning enough to let him spin out of the grip, letting his shirt tear at the seam to get away before the staff can swing into the small of his back and take his legs from under him.

The distance is allowed; won, this time, as they both circle each other and pant. Ardus is aware of the knife in Arthur’s right hand and Arthur gives him another to look at in his left. Stamina is something Arthur has in droves - he’s known for years how to pace himself in movement and both of them knew, coming into this trial, that Ardus would have to be quick. Sooner or later, the teacher will tire.

But the weapons master is canny and he knows battle like the thunder of guns. He doesn’t waste words on talking as he circles this time, nor does he show any quarter to the bleeding wound in his side. Arthur takes a moment to sink back into the calm, present drone that makes his breathing slow and his hands go steady.

They both attempt a few approaches, testing the other without wasting too much energy. Arthur starts, feinting to one side as he sends a knife spinning towards Ardus’s chest. The man bats it aside with the staff without blinking, then the next one, mouth curling up into a grin. The sight of that touches a flame to the coals in Arthur’s belly and wakes the memory that he’s been trying to bury, to fight without bringing to mind.

“I remember your cully,” Ardus says, still moving, making Arthur react to jabs as if he’s really coming in again. “It’s him you’re here for, int it?”

The flames are burning now, catching fire in the coals of his stomach, and Arthur takes another knife from his pocket with the intent to throw it - but something makes him hold it still for a moment, as his feet wind around the dusty circle.

Ardus sees his pain, no matter how hard Arthur tries to hold it back. He’s a man who knows how to press his advantage. “Caught himself afore I could rip the other cheek, or take out his eye. Lucky.”

He’s not so easy to read now, like his mind has put up bricks, or maybe Arthur just can’t reach across like usual.

“Thought he might beg, before th’end.” Ardus takes a step to the left and Arthur realises, very, very belatedly, that he’s been lead straight to the edge of the ring with nothing but air behind him. “Or maybe cry my pardon, fer breakin’ all custom an’ fuckin' you b’fore either of ye was a man.”

Arthur goes straight for Ardus again: smack into centre. This time there’s no surprise to it and he gets the beating he knows he’s in for. The staff bats him about the chest and whips his ribs, even as he goes for Ardus’s tight, hard waist. Arthur has no weight advantage, just speed, and it’s only the whip of his head and violent drop to his knees that saves him the crippling blow to the back of his neck.

The staff slams into his shoulderblade instead and that arm screams, even as Arthur twists around and under Ardus’s stance and hooks a knee and ankle around his own, twisting the man backwards as he drives the flat of his palm hard into the flesh of Ardus’s other thigh. It’s cheap, but effective. Ardus is turning even as he goes down, driving the end of the staff into the dirt just an inch from Arthur’s mouth.

The knife is fast, like Arthur, and by the time Ardus is on the ground it’s shoved up into his underarm. The hole gushes bright red blood onto Arthur’s face and Ardus grunts, like he’s impressed.

Arthur writhes like a fish to avoid getting pinned where he is and manages to crawl free even as the staff appears in Ardus’s other hand and smacks him across the back of the head. When Ardus grabs the rough linen of Arthur’s trousers, Arthur yanks his leg so hard half the material tears off in the man’s hand and he scrabbles away, almost tripping back onto his feet.

Ardus is fast too, but he’s slowing, bleeding, and he takes his time getting up - as much as Ardus ever takes his time. It gives Arthur the moment he’s been waiting for, slipping the wound rope loose from the one knife in his sleeve, fingering it as he drags his feet, breathing hard. 

“Bondsman,” he breathes, finding the end of the hemp and pinching it tight. “Yield. I give you no other warning.”

Ardus can’t read people the way Arthur can. All he sees is the physical: the spin of the knife, recognising the blur just as the handle hits him hard in the temple. He drops to one knee, feeling that same daze that Arthur had the first time a knife had rebounded off the barn wall and struck him straight between the eyes.

It gives Arthur the break he’s been waiting for. He flies forward, driving the other knife in his left hand - the one Ardus had been concentrating on - into the nook between the man’s collarbone and shoulder, shoving it all the way in and up. As Ardus swings the staff to catch him, Arthur is no longer there, spiralling around to face the man's back and pulling the loops of rope from the blade tight around Ardus’s neck.

There’s a hole in this knife, like all of them: a borehole burrowed into the part of the steel that makes up the handle. Over years, Arthur has tied and waxed knots there so tight the blade will never break free even if the rope's unwound completely. He has a hook in Ardus, now, pulling up against his own bone, because this knife is made special: curved, like the ones Joker uses.

And Arthur’s stuck it in the weapons master who thought to turn it on Arthur’s ka-mate.

He shoves his boot into Ardus’s back and yanks back on the rope, forcing him to kneel. Leaning down, so he can speak right into Ardus’s ear, Arthur’s voice is low and full of weight. _"Yield.”_

Ardus slaps his hand against his own thigh like he means to, but Arthur catches sight of the fallen knife on the ground too near. He kicks it away and Ardus laughs a choke-wheeze of a laugh.

He nods this time, and when Arthur leans in, pulling extra tight on the hook, he hears Ardus say the words he’s been waiting to hear.

_Aye, I yield._

Only then does he take his foot off Ardus’ back and unwind the rope, setting a hand on the man’s sweat-slick shoulder. “Rise, bondsman.”

Ardus staggers to his feet, glancing back with a ragged look of matched pride and pleasure on his face. He’s a wreck of blood and sweat, but wearing it with honour. “Gladly, gunslinger. Thee fought well.”

They clasp hands, and even though Arthur could not lift Ardus’s weight if he had ten more years to practice, he helps the man to his feet. Ardus touches the knife still stuck in his shoulder and the rope trailing out of it with approval. “A fine tactic.”

Arthur’s eyes flash to it. “I’d fierce like to see it back, once you’ve sought aid.”

Ardus hawks a bloody glob of phlegm and spits it aside. “Say thankya, I will. Now, go and tell your Lynch.” His smile is red and raw but fond. “They tell me he’s been waitin’.”

No other words could make Arthur move as fast as that does. He barely feels the battering his body has taken or the fast-fading thrill of fighting. He has another thrill speeding him on out of the yard, hunting for Joker like a hawk on the wing. He doesn’t expect to see him break out of the building behind him, looking faint apologetic and guilty, like…

Like he’s broken with every custom he could think of, to come and watch.

Arthur throws himself at Joker, slamming into his body and cutting off whatever words he was gonna say. He drives his lips against Joker’s mouth, still wet with Ardus’s blood, and cups his face even as he forces their hips together and wakes the growing animal urge inside.

Breaking back, Arthur just steals enough breath to tell Joker he passed, like Joker doesn’t know, like he didn’t feel this same kind of crazed the moment he tipped over the edge of age and became a gunslinger. Like how Arthur doesn’t hesitate now, taking him back to the barn, shouting at the younger ‘prentices to git as he throws them both into the straw.

And there’s no guessing who became a man tonight, for anyone within earshot.


End file.
